Ramona Mosse studied English and Comparative Literature in the UK and the USA. A recipient of the Whiting Foundation Fellowship in the Humanities, she completed her PhD thesis, Between Tragedy and Utopia; Revolution and the Political Stage after 1945, at Columbia University (2008). In addition, she has worked as a writer and dramaturg in New York downtown theatres with such companies as Mabou Mines, Target Margin and the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre. Both practically and theoretically, her work engages with the making of politics on stage.

Research Project

The Global Trade with Authenticity: Toward a Politics of Hip Hop Performance

My project explores the parameters and tools by which hip hop as cultural politics stages itself. Hip hop music has staked its claim to give voice to the oppressed, simultaneously making demands on the authenticity of such expression, a demand that seems not to have stumbled over its own rise to a global phenomenon. But what is the authentic once it hits a global scale? With its recent move toward a more theatrical aesthetic, hip hop has begun to investigate its own form; in its performance, it thus becomes a case study for the instrumentalization of the authentic in a world of globalized culture commodities. Hip hop as theatre battles with hip hop in its musical form and thereby allows for an investigation into the state of transcultural discourse itself.

Selected Publication

• Mosse, R., “Born to Be Wild – Amerika-Rezeption im Werk von Wolfgang Bauer,” in P. Pechmann (ed.) Wolfgang Bauer - Lektüren und Dokumente, Klagenfurt and Wien: Ritter Verlag, 2007.